Sunday Sickies

Beth, I'm sorry. I know you worry when I don't post. It's been a crazy kind of week; I'll try to do better.

J spiked a fever Thursday. I had a babysitter here the whole day so I could prep some for the big BBQ we were hosting on Saturday and finish up lots of stuff in my classroom. J was fine all day. We went to my sister's to see her new furniture in the afternoon.

Sidenote: We had been told that it was highly unlikely we would be able to get pregnant on our own since it had taken us five years and lots of fertility treatments to conceive the boys AND when they did emergency surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy when I was seven weeks pregnant with the boys (yes, everything the hard way, that's me) they discovered I had stage 4 endometriosis, which would make it very difficult to ever get pregnant again unless treated.

When I was late a month after I had stopped nursing the boys, we didn't think much of it, chalking it up to the change in hormones that my body was going through. But when I was more than a week late, we laughingly bought a pregnancy test just to rule out the possibility. That weekend we had splurged on a decorator who would redo our bedroom, painting, buying curtains, bedspreads, bed frame, etc. While they were working in the room, I went into the bathroom, peed on the stick, set it aside, and began brushing my teeth. I began choking on the toothpaste suds in my mouth when I glanced down and saw two dark lines indicating a pregnancy. I spit out, a smile instantly forming on my face even though the shock prevented me from feeling the steps as I walked downstairs to tell DH.

Since the bedroom was completed that night, I had the perfect excuse to have my sister come over so I could tell her the HUGE news. I called her later, raving about the new furniture and the way the bedroom looked, insisting that she come over immediately to see it. As she looked around the room, admiring the walls and the curtains, I kept trying to draw her attention to the bedspread where I had placed the positive pregnancy test. I finally had to be very insistant about checking out this very spot on the bed, but I knew that she had seen it once her whole body froze and her mouth dropped open. It was a very satisfying way to spread the news.

Fast forward to this past Thursday. DS had bought new furniture for her living room and had called up for me to bring the kids over to check it out. She was so excited about it she was practically begging for us to come over. Knowing our history, I don't think any of you can be surprised what was in the back of my mind the whole time I was looking around her new living room. I ultimately turned to her and asked if she was positive there wasn't anything else she was trying to tell me here. She looked at me blankly for a few moments and then quickly began reassuring me that no, she was not pregnant.

In any case, after the kids had played for about an hour, J visibly began fading, first sitting at the table playing, then sitting at the table staring off into space, then laying on one of the new couches clearly in her own world. DS picked her up only to exclaim how hot she was. We took her temperature only to discover that it had spiked from normal to 103 that fast. We took her to the doctor that afternoon since she'd had a cold for over a week. Cold + fever normally = ear infection. Not this time.

We put her to bed early, though she was up several times that night. During the day on Friday we decided that we shouldn't risk it and cancelled the BBQ. We were all really bummed to do that. It turned out to be a good choice since that night B developed his own high fever. His stomach hurt a lot too. A came back that afternoon from an outing with Grandpop only to have his own problems with his stomach. J had stomach issues later that day too.

So today, while the kids are all doing MUCH better, we decided to keep them all quiet for one more day. It would really suck if any of them were sick on Tuesday, the boys' first day of kindergarten.

Edited to add: For the record, I am not pregnant. One of my cousins read this post and interpreted my story about finding out I was pregnant with J and telling my sister to mean that I just found out I was pregnant again NOW. I love all three of my children, but really really really feel I have all I can handle. Besides, if I were to get pregnant now, well...let's just say that would be an amazing feat and we would have to have a serious talk with a certain urologist who did a certain procedure after a certain little girl was born. Enough said.